| Chapter 6
When you are alone, how do you feel? Do you feel scared? Do you feel angry? Does the feeling of despair course its way through you veins? When the thought of imminent death comes, will you run into the shadows? Or will you look into the darkness, and travel in its void? Will you seek out the other lost souls? For when you do, and when you find another who wanders alone, something amazing happens. When bonds are formed, it creates a beacon in the darkness. A light against the dark, a shield against the fear. Those that ventured out will be done to that hope, and will add their strength to it. Given time, the greatest bond, a community of family is formed.
Waves, Jamis, Jaina, Marks, Dan, Charles, Scott, and Morgan. I made sure that I could match the names to faces, as we made our way over the rubble. Waves and Jamis, the bodyguards, were distant relatives of Jaina. All three of them hailed from the very southern edge of California. Jaina, the leader, had a knack for getting people to do what she wanted, by making them want to do it, willingly. Marks, the tech, was good at anything involving electronics or mechanics. He even volunteered to tweak the engine on the Humvee to make it more efficient. Dan, the rookie, was the latest edition to the group outside of us. He wasn't good at a lot of things, but was a good shot with a riffle. Charles and Scott were known as the demolition brothers, to put it simply they loved to blow things up with heavy fire power. They were all over our shotguns, and the high explosive rounds. They wanted to figure out how the shells worked and see if they could duplicate the effect for smaller arms. Lastly there was Morgan, the scout. He spent most of his time alone, but had paths mapped out to everywhere. If there was a faster way, he was the one to know it. Mac gave him a rough idea of where we parked the Humvee, and he had us there in a quarter hour.
On the way the gang tried to figure out nicknames for all of us. Things like shotgun and shark were thrown around. Jaina even tried to nickname me peanut, but I shot that down as soon as it came up. Eventually the four of us were clumped under the name of core men. This came about when mention of Mac belonging to the Marine Core surfaced. They could care less that the three of us weren't ever part of the military. We traveled with Mac, and that was good enough. Once Mac mentioned that he would have been happy to have us in his old unit, the nickname was sealed.
“Alright people,” Jaina ordered as we reached the Humvee. “Grab up what you can, priorities to medical and food supplies.” We had more enough people with us to take everything that we had brought. Waves and Jamis carried huge loads of the supplies by themselves, and I felt guilty carrying how little I was.
In an attempt to alleviate my guilt, I went over to Waves, and liberated some of his supplies from him. His head peaked over the pile as I took a lot of weight off him. “Thanks.” He said gruffly, “It's always interesting to have new people around. Wonder how exactly you guys are going to fit in.”
I shrugged, and shifted my load around as the group began to leave. “How did you guys manage to fit in? Whats your story?”
Jamis came up on my other side and flanked me as we walked. “It's mostly the same story the Jaina has.” He said. “It's a... terrible story.”
“So is ours. Everyone in my group has a terrible story.” I said grimly. “I guess we need to redefine terrible now, because everything is. If you guys are willing, I'd like to hear it anyways.”
“Alright then.” Waves started. “First of you should know we're brothers.”
“And that we are cousins of Jaina.” Jamis finished
“We grew up on separate farms right next to each other. We treated her like a sister, and her brother as our own.”
“All four of us were away from the farm when the bombs went off. We rushed back home, and the...” Jamis stopped.
“The farms were on fire.” Waves continued where his brother couldn't. “Someone had set them on fire, the bombs had nothing to do with it. Our... Our parents we're shot and dead, and so were Jaina's.”
They didn't talk for a short time, and we made our way over a pile under Morgan's guidance. “I'm sorry.” I said weakly.
Jamis nodded, then continued. “We didn't leave for some time, and started salvaging what we could. Things went as well as they could, all things considered. Then the buzzard came.
“A buzzard?” I asked. “You were attacked?”
“Yes.” Waves answered. “We destroyed it, but Jaina's brother was badly injured.”
“He wasn't going to live unless we got him to a doctor.” Jamis continued. “The closest area we knew of was Sacramento. We thought perhaps they still had a standing hospital, or at least someone who could help. So we grabbed up what we could, and booked it here. We couldn't of found the hospital if we wanted to, that is until we encountered Morgan.
“We found him wandering in the debris.” Waves took over where his brother stopped. “He was half-starved, but very eager to help us. He showed us the the remains of the hospital, and even managed to take us inside. It was... It was too little to late. He had died before we could do anything for him.”
“I'm... I'm so sorry.” I stammered. “There wasn't anything that could be done?”
“No” Jamis answered flatly. “Nothing short of a full medical team and and operation could have saved him. We buried him, and began wonder what we were going to do. Morgan showed us where he was living and invited us to stay as long as we wanted. That's how our group started, with a death, and an act of friendship.”
“So where did the rest of you guys come from?” I asked. “Did all of them come because of the radio transmission?”
“Funny you should mention that” Waves commented. “Yesterday was our first transmission with it.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He confirmed. “Marks was the second person we encountered. We found him wandering the city looking for food. He had apparently rode out the bombs in a shelter, out side the city, that his family had built in the Cold War. None of his family survived, and the bunker wasn't stocked. So he made his way here, and we took him in. He was working on the radio for the last few days, he actually managed to build it out of ruined parts, and scrap material.”
“Do I hear envious voices?” Marks had snuck up behind me and listened the the end of the comment.
“No.” Jamis countered. “Just proving how much of a nerd you are to Derek.”
“Nerd or not, I'm the reason the core men are here.” He gloated. “And I'm the reason you guys are still armed.”
“Cut it.” Waves sneered. “Just because you found that weapons cashe, doesn't mean that you not a nerd.”
“Weapons cashe?”
“Yeah.” Marks responded. “Someone had a big ol' stash of weapons. I just found them, and it was kinda ironic. There was this big ol' spray painted image of a cat hanging from a tree, with the caption of 'Hang in there baby!'”.
Resistance! Maybe that was one of their outposts! “Was there anyone there? Any signs of who built the place?”
“No. The place as buried and I stumbled upon it by sheer luck. Whoever had built it was either dead or had abandoned it. Why?”
“There was someone we knew, he was military, who had that caption as his unit slogan. Before he...” I paused for a moment not wanting to say it. “He mentioned that some of his unit was out west in the cities. That might have been one of their outposts. If there is time latter, I'd like to see it.”
“I'll have to talk to Jaina about it, but it shouldn't be a problem” Marks moved ahead of us, intent on catching up to Jaina who was talking
“Nerd!” Jamis called after him as he left. “In all seriousness, he's the one you go to for electronics junk. We have all seen the cache, or whats left of it, so I'm sure its not going to be a problem.”
“Provided the 'Demolition Brothers' don't destroy it when they test out new munitions.” Waves countered. “They are always causing damage, and I foresee that damage growing exponentially once they get their hands on your shotgun rounds”
I chuckled. “Too late, they already have some. They managed to get a few from Kyle. Speaking of them, where are they?” I asked looking around. “They aren't here.”
“Not to worry. Jaina sends them off to collect what they can from the drones. When we first found them they were attempting to blast there way into a subway, not very well I might add. They were the classical delinquents. Apparently they got trapped in an under ground tunnel when the bombs when off, and blasted their way out some time later. They don't talk much about their past, and its the general belief that they were once military.” He paused for a moment. “Hey rookie! Don't get to far away from the group!”
Dan was halfway up a hill following a parallel course, and slowly making his way higher up. “Rookie never was much on hanging with the group.” Jamis laughed. “ He's too young to care about much, he's only sixteen. He's the last one to join us, other than you guys. He literally just stumbled into where we were staying. I dunno if I'd trust him with a gun, but we need the man power of everyone we can get.
“Ah!” Waves mentioned as we crested a debris hill. “Here we are. Home sweet home. Well, not very sweet but its better than living out in the open.”
__________________
Iron sharpens iron so that one man sharpens another man. The spark of inspiration is just that, a spark cast off from a brighter fire that lands and ignites a new fire. Don't be afraid to be bold, daring and creative. |
03-16-2008
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